Friday, July 20, 2012

Nikon D7000 - Failure 'R' Us

My Nikon D7000 camera, barely a year old, died suddenly last weekend. Ouch. Every image now contains the blurred black bar as pictured, along with a sick sounding shutter, complete with blinking Err message. Game over. After some Google searching, appears I'm not the only one to experience this.

I'm seriously bummed, since I really dig this camera and use it a lot. It was a 50th birthday present from my wife, and really kick started my interest back into photography. After checking the receipt, discovered it died nine days out of the one year warranty period. Double ouch. And I actually didn't unbox the camera for two weeks after receiving it, but I have no way to prove that, so purchase date it is.

Being without the camera bums me out more then potentially paying for the repair. Great camera, and I'd consider buying another D7000 body as a spare and/or to have an additional camera to shoot races, lessening the need to swap lenses. At $1200 per body, that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

I called Nikon on Monday and talked to a rep. He didn't promise it being covered under warranty, though gut tells me it'll be covered. I hope. Camera now shipped off to repair center in California, no idea how long it will be gone.

After whining about my plight to Facebook friends, old coworker pal offered to loan me his Nikon D60, since he also owns a D7000 - along with yet another photographer pal of mine sporting a D7000, who offered me his D80. Lots of spreading the camera love, pretty cool.

I picked up the D60 this week, curious to try out the lower end end of Nikon DSLR range and compare to my D7000 - which will hopefully return soon...

7 comments:

I'll see what happens, so far they haven't said no yet. Hopefully they'll cover it. Years ago, had an issue with our Canon camcorder, fixed under warranty. Same issue happened again later, out of warranty, Canon repaired again for free.

Come on Nikon, you can match my Canon service, I'm counting on you. I really dig the D7000...

NIKON are usually so robust its a shame this happened to yours. Don't know much about d60 but know although d80 may be a bit dated are still quality cameras and still match lower end dslrs for photo quality.

Nikon got back to me a few days ago. 10 days out of warranty - not covered. $231 for the repair. Ouch. I call and talked to a rep, he said I could contest the decision, that would take a few days. I elected to pay the dough and get my camera in the repair queue - I really want it back ASAP.

So, still a major bummer - that it failed and not covered. Microscopic kudos to Nikon to allow me to dispute it, and I elected not to. Now I just hope to see my camera back soon...